Movie Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past, a most excellent film

Days of Future Past is the story of a human horror frog who’s as immortal as his sideburns are long getting sent back in time to prevent the cunning Tyrion Lannister from being assassinated by a jaundice eyed woman in a blue bodysuit. The movie is chock full of everything the public expects of a summer blockbuster: action, psychosexual time bending confrontations of one’s own self, and Richard Nixon getting trapped by a flying baseball stadium.

The permeating themes of xenophobia and sideburns in the X-Men series paint a grim future at the opening of the film. The world has become a dusty police state, lorded over by the brutal sentinels, weapons built to hunt and destroy mutants and their sympathizers. The X-Men are now a beleaguered force on the brink of loss, rallying for a late game hail Mary. They throw Wolverine down the football field of time so he can change the course of history.

Logan has the unseemly task of becoming a mentor to the clinically depressed Professor, while simultaneously convincing him that he’s from the future. Enemies become friends and people get kicked in the face as they fight for a better tomorrow. There’s an homage to the classic work of fiction, Futurama (that episode where everyone gets a bunch of government money and Fry drinks 100 coffees), and Magneto says that JFK was a mutant. He never mentions what his power was, but it was probably either diplomacy, or the ability to intuitively know exactly what the temperature is. All the while, as the mutants fight for a new future, the old future fights on to keep Wolverine in the past long enough to complete his task.

Unfortunately, by creating a new timeline Wolverine hasn’t actually traveled through time, but actually to a different dimension. The fellow mutants that sent him back in time will still die in gross dystopian mud puddles in a Chinese castle, and Logan will be enjoying carbon copies of them, the same but different. We can only assume the sequel will be Wolverine slowly coming to terms with his own chilling reality. What I’m trying to say here is that the only movie that ever got time travel right is Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.